o do her husband
a courtesy, for I think he is a man that deserves very well. So abroad
with my wife by coach to St. James's, to one Lady Poultny's, where I
found my Lord, I doubt, at some vain pleasure or other. I did give him a
short account of what I had done with Mr. Coventry, and so left him, and
to my wife again in the coach, and with her to the Parke, but the Queene
being gone by the Parke to Kensington, we staid not but straight home
and to supper (the first time I have done so this summer), and so to
my office doing business, and then to my monthly accounts, where to my
great comfort I find myself better than I was still the last month, and
now come to L930. I was told to-day, that upon Sunday night last, being
the King's birth-day, the King was at my Lady Castlemayne's lodgings
(over the hither-gates at Lambert's lodgings) dancing with fiddlers all
night almost; and all the world coming by taking notice of it, which I
am sorry to hear. The discourse of the town is only whether a warr with
Holland or no, and we are preparing for it all we can, which is but
little. Myself subject more than ordinary to pain by winde, which makes
me very sad, together with the trouble which at present lies upon me in
my father's behalf, rising from the death of my brother, which are many
and great. Would to God they were over!

JUNE 1664

June 1st. Up, having lain long, going to bed very late after the ending
of my accounts. Being up Mr. Hollyard came to me, and to my great
sorrow, after his great assuring me that I could not possibly have the
stone again, he tells me that he do verily fear that I have it again,
and has brought me something to dissolve it, which do make me very
much troubled, and pray to God to ease me. He gone, I down by water to
Woolwich and Deptford to look after the dispatch of the ships, all the
way reading Mr. Spencer's Book of Prodigys, which is most ingeniously
writ, both for matter and style. Home at noon, and my little girl got me
my dinner, and I presently out by water and landed at Somerset stairs,
and thence through Covent Garden, where I met with Mr. Southwell (Sir W.
Pen's friend), who tells me the very sad newes of my Lord Tiviott's and
nineteen more commission officers being killed at Tangier by the Moores,
by an ambush of the enemy upon them, while they were surveying their
lines; which is very sad, and, he says, afflicts the King much. Thence
to W. Joyce's, where by appointment I met my w